Saturday, August 14, 2010

Nomenclature

I often touch upon horses' names in this blog, so was particularly pleased to see two good ones yesterday. The nicest name seems, happily, to have been given to a really nice horse, because Frankel (by Galileo ex Kind, thus a half-brother to Bullet Train) won on his debut on a bog track at Newmarket's evening meeting last night for Juddmonte. I presume that he is named after Juddmonte's late American trainer Bobby Frankel, who so sadly died last year. I'm guessing that the Prince wanted to name a really good horse in honour of his trainer and friend, and if this debut is anything to go by, he's applied the name very fittingly - doubly fittingly, in fact, with the colt's dam being called Kind, because I'm told that Bobby Frankel was a very kind man. It's a long time between now and next year's Derby, but choirs of angels will be singing for this horse along the way.

To go, incongruously, from the sublime to the ridiculous - a journey which I frequently undertake - the other horse whose name brought a smile to my face yesterday was the Michael Quinlan-trained debutant Mr Shammie, who whipped them in in a maiden race at Kempton last night. Mr Shammie is an identity well known to many around here, as this photograph makes clear. This photograph, incidentally, was taken in the spring. In it, Mr Shammie is approaching the Bury Road traffic lights from the Norwich Road, and one might hazard a guess that he has just completed a testing work-out up the Limekilns. This might, incidentally, be a fairly pointless paragraph, but never fear - I'm sure it won't be the final chapter on Mr Shammie.
I mustn't ramble any longer because I've got 1,001 things to do: we're just coming to the end of one busy week and shortly to start another. Plenty of runners to report on, and I'll get around to providing an overview if and when I can finally manage to pause for thought. Let's hope that I can report on a winner at some stage.

No comments: